Spring, Summer, so far…

Calgary, July 2025. © Tyler A.W. Burke. *(All images in this blog have been highly compressed to improve load time.)*

I’ve been thinking about an encounter, it was maybe around 2014 - when I was just getting into photography - and I was at the racetrack with my brother and my dad. It was in Portland or Spokane I think. The day of racing was done and we were packed up; I was walking around exploring the evening sunlight. I was looking through the viewfinder, up at a light post that was catching light in an interesting way and a middle aged man walked up to me and looked up at the light post, back at me, and asked “what are you looking at?” I tried to explain that it was just sunlight and a light post, but there was something more that I couldn’t put into words. He shook his head and walked away, clearly thinking I was a pretty weird guy.

I felt a bit self-conscious then, but hundreds of iterations of this encounter have since played out in the 11 years since; I still probably look pretty strange to the layperson, standing there with the camera to my face on the street, documenting something that looks like nothing to them. I recently had another one of these encounters with an elderly lady: I was taking a photo of an apartment building’s facade in the Beltline and she walked up and asked “what are you photographing?” I opened the LCD screen on my X-T4 and showed her, explaining, “it’s just the facade but the evening night looks nice and I’ve admired this brick building for years.” It turns out she lives across the street and had been admiring the evening light on that facade for years and thought I had done a decent job of capturing it (that photo is below, marked with ***). She wished me a happy Canada Day, got in her car, and drove off. It feels nice to be at a point in my career where the vision is usually communicable; I still think that middle aged man at the track would shake his head at me, but I also know enough now to know that while he’s just not open to getting it, other people are.

I suppose if there’s a distillation here, it’s something along the lines of: if people don’t get your stuff right now, they may not be the right people to begin with, or you may just need 11 more years of practice.

June was a period of getting back into the saddle when it comes to street photography (the photo directly above and below are the products of my first June photowalk, taken with my X100V). The first 5 months of the year had been sporadic and infrequent at best - my focus really was on the commercial side of my photography; it needed to be so.

Also in June, we went on a little roadtrip to Saskatoon for a wedding celebration. My X100V was in my bag and despite the trip not having a photography focus, I did get some photos I enjoy, including one from the road during a construction stop on our way out (below).

Saskatchewan, June 2025. © Tyler A.W. Burke.

The Saskatchewan trip happily coincided with me flipping through George Webber’s Saskatchewan Book at the local bookstore right after we got back to the city. For the first time in a while I felt a real pull to start shooting something rural again. Stay tuned on this, as it’s very much still in gestation.

Saskatoon, June 2025. © Tyler A.W. Burke.

I found Saskatoon pleasantly dated. Unlike in Calgary, many older buildings are still standing (perhaps the city is just in an earlier stage of change). Brutalist buildings like the bank building in the photo above and the imposing brick hotel in the photo below immediately drew my eye. The photo above was a walking experiment with shooting from the hip, and I enjoy the slight messiness of it.

I came back from Saskatoon with a lot of pent-up creative energy. So on Canada Day, I went for a long photowalk, starting in the west end of downtown, working east.

I found myself gravitating towards photos/compositions not as dependent on a passerby’s inclusion. The cab driver in the photo above was a happy accident. The Mewata Armoury’s reflection in the top part of the frame also adds to this a photo a sense of having both vertical and horizontal triptychs that are somewhat unbalanced and imperfect in an interesting way. Speaking of the Mewata Armoury:

Further on, down 14th Street, I saw a neat idea for a self-portrait, embedding myself in the street in a shot featuring some interesting glass reflection distortions:

Sometimes cars are in the way, but sometimes they have something to offer a photo. That day I found myself leaning more into incorporating vehicles.

This summer, I’ve felt drawn to shapes in the street - shadows, abstractions, interactions, textures - in addition to capturing passersby and their immediate architectural/infrastructural contexts. The following are a few such photographs:

The very first photograph at the top of this blog was also from this photowalk. I’ve shot many photos over the last few years in that spot on 8th Street, but this latest one may be my favourite.

One of the most interesting parts about shooting the same locale over time is returning to a place, seeing something totally different, and making something new with the same ingredients in a new combination. The above photo is one such creation from that July 1 photowalk.

I followed up that July 1 photowalk with a few more in the following weeks. A new side-focus on compositions featuring street shapes, textures, and more abstract feelings has carried through those walks. The photos above and below are examples from one early morning walk, again on the west side of downtown.

Of course, the single-subject street photograph still very much speaks to me:

Another place I’ve made plenty of photographs that I feel never quite hit the mark - Lang’s Grocery on 17th Avenue. The photo below is my favourite of Lang’s so far, and I think openly admits of a strong Fred Herzog influence.

That just about brings us up to the present. I did go on another photowalk this morning, before sitting down to write and compile this blog entry, but those photos will have to be the first of my next entry perhaps - and I’ll post them on my Instagram when they’re ready. I’m really liking the path I’m currently on - combining the passersby photos I’ve been shooting for years with more abstract, texture-focused, or otherwise “empty” compositions that yet still have something to say and contribute. And as I mentioned earlier on in this entry, I am considering heading back out to the country more frequently to capture some more rural scenes again. We’ll see how it all plays out.

If you’ve made it this far into the entry, you might be interested in the new prints in my shop - the shop is fully up to date as of the time of writing. As well, my next email newsletter will include an invitation to a wholly new event that I’m hoping to host, which will take place sometime in August. I’ve been thinking a lot about contributing more to community-building amongst photographers here in Calgary, so this event will be a first step in that direction. Stay tuned to your inbox for that.

In other news, I’ve been submitting for markets and exhibition opportunities recently, so fingers crossed I’ll have some updates of that nature to share with you soon as well!

Take care, and talk soon,

Autumnal East Coast.